This episode focuses on local singer/songwriter Erin Parkes. We discuss songwriting, a local collective of songwriters called "The Song Project", and Grey's Anatomy among other topics. Plus, Erin sings a few of her original compositions.

Admittedly, this is what happens when an episode of the podcast is due tomorrow, and I wasn't prepared for that. In truth, if you're going to skip an episode, this might be a decent choice for that.

For close to an hour, I played one of my classic favorite video games: Monster Rancher for the Playstation. Think of this as a Let's Play without a second person to bounce ideas off of, and no visual context.

Oh, but if you do want visual context, subscribe to the Pants Pending Patreon! Subscribers are actually getting a video feed of what happened on the screen, too.

Nathan Lansing is a very clever, talented, and funny guy. He is a music instructor at Spokane Falls Community College in charge of the school choirs, and he also teaches a course on the history of pop music.

We discuss the things that made him decide to become an instructor, the events that lead to his unique arrangement of the Star Spangled Banner, and the consumption of music before the internet.

Nathan has a few concerts coming up where you can see him do his thing. Click on the links below for more details.

Donald Hawkins is a local singer songwriter here in Spokane, WA which is something that he and I share in common. Oddly enough, we both also grew up in Sacramento, CA!

I mastered Donald's upcoming album called "One and Done", and I am looking forward to the day when I can tell you where to find it. It isn't available yet, but you can check out some of his other music here:

Plus, Mr. Hawkins was nice enough to perform some songs live in studio for the episode! Included in the episode are acoustic renditions of "Free", "Shopping on the Moon", and "Come Back to My Senses".

Additionally, Donald and I are also working on a side project called Great Mimes with our mutual friend Andy Rumsey. This episode of the podcast also includes the premiere of a Great Mimes demo for our new song "I Lost Count". (We actually worked on the song after recording the podcast!)

Brian C. Baer is the writer of "Bad Publicity", a fictional story he describes as a "weird ghost paparazzi story." The book is currently out of print, but you might be able to buy it on Amazon.

Brian has also written a book about He-Man and the Masters of the Universe called "How He-Man Mastered the Universe - Toy to Television to the Big Screen." The book will be available in early 2017, and the cover art looks amazing. Behold the glory of the cover art below these words!

We also discuss Robocop, the Room, and we come up with some concepts for films that should probably never be made.

We discuss what makes a good comic book movie, Colby's original story called "Sidelined", and we even come up with a couple of potential movie ideas with the help of a board game called "Hollywood Shuffle".

There is a special promotion going on in August of 2016 for the Magic 2.0 book series on Amazon. You can get the Kindle versions of "Off to Be the Wizard", "Spell or High Water", and "An Unwelcome Quest" as a package deal for less than $6! Click here to check out the promotion!

In the early 1980's, Pac-Man was a wildly successful arcade game that took the world by storm. Some of the things inspired by Pac-Man included a cartoon, a board game, breakfast cereal, and a hit pop song that reached #9 on the Hot 100 Billboard Pop chart! That song was "Pac-Man Fever", and it was created by Buckner and Garcia.

In 1982, Buckner and Garcia followed up the success of "Pac-Man Fever" with an entire album of songs inspired by video games, also entitled "Pac-Man Fever".

In this episode: Jerry Buckner discusses the success of "Pac-Man Fever", a series of near misses, and fascinating behind the scenes stories about being a songwriter, jingle writer, and voiceover artist.

Dawn Sanger is a good friend of mine who is very easy to talk to, and she is absolutely hilarious in my opinion. I'm trying to convince her and my friend Jeff Burris (from episode 2 of this podcast) to become comedy writers in their non-existent spare time.